Shopping For Coffee Beans on the Web

Your favorite supermarket may carry a variety of different brands and flavors of coffee, but if you are a true coffee connoisseur, this probably will not appease your desire for quality coffee. The advent of specialty coffee shops has produced a new wave of coffee drinkers with a much more sophisticated palette than coffee drinkers of the past. Plus, home coffee bean roasting is quickly becoming a new trend in coffee, but unroasted beans are not always readily available in stores. While it might be difficult to purchase wholesale green coffee beans in a traditional retail setting, fortunately, the Internet provides the opportunity to purchase quality coffee beans that you may not find in your average grocery store. Since the Internet is an international phenomenon and online stores are available for consumers every hour of the day, online mercantile has quickly become the preferred way to buy and sell a multitude of different products.

If you are thinking you would like to buy green coffee beans online, there are many reasons why it is a wonderful thing to try. Green coffee beans stay fresh for an extended period of time and by roasting beans yourself, you are ensuring that they are roasted to your exact specifications and preferences. Also, the Internet provides product variety that is unavailable in most traditional brick-and-mortar environments.

If you choose to purchase regular roasted coffee beans online, you are making sure that you are buying the freshest beans possible, because many online retailers will ship out your beans within just a couple days of being roasted. To contrast, coffee beans purchased in a grocery store may have been roasted weeks ago, since they have to be transported to supermarkets and then sit on shelves. The advantage to utilizing the Internet for your coffee bean purchases is clear.

When you decide to purchase coffee beans online, make sure that you are sampling different roasts from different retailers so that you can find the type of coffee that is most suitable to you. Fortunately, the Internet makes it easy for you to try a variety of different coffee beans since there are many different retailers.

Steve writes about Gaggia espresso machines and Capresso coffee grinders.

By Steve Turley

Coffee People Medium Extra Bold, Donut Shop K-Cups for Keurig Brewers (Pack of 50)

Cooking with Coffee: 60 Recipes Using Fair Trade Coffee

Cooking with Coffee: 60 Recipes Using Fair Trade Coffee (New Internationalist Fairtrade Cookbooks)

Coffee is more than a morning pick-me-up. This fair trade cookbook demonstrates the range of drinks and dishes that can be created using this much loved stimulant: hot chocolate with coffee and cinnamon, cafe frappe, Mexican mole, lamb fillets with mocha and apple sauce, coffee doughnuts, coffee mousse with coffee and orange tuiles, mocha torte, espress-flavoured amaretti, coffee macaroons and more. It also enables the reader to follow the journey of the coffee bean from its origins in Latin America and Africa, through the refinement process, to roasting houses in more northerly climes. Details of fair trade coffee suppliers are provided at the back of the book.

Green Mountain Coffee Begins Shipping Vending Machine For K-Cups

Tim Sanford
Editor@vendingtimes.net

WATERBURY, VT -- Green Mountain Coffee Roasters said it is now shipping the Keurig K-Cup vending machine previewed at the National Automatic Merchandising Association's recent Spring Expo (see story here). The full-size vender offers up to 12 selections, and accommodates more than 1,000 K-Cups.

Designed to make Keurig single-cup brewing feasible in high-traffic commercial and manufacturing settings, the Green Mountain Coffee-branded vending machine dispenses K-Cup portion packs for use in Keurig single-cup brewers. Tully's- and Caribou-branded machines will be available later this summer.

The vender was developed for large venues that sell coffee and other beverages to employees or visitors. It allows operators to meet the demand for portion-packed, single-cup coffee with a solution that is economical, low maintenance and sanitary.

"This innovative system will make people think about coffee from a vending machine in a whole new way," said T.J. Whalen, vice-president of marketing for GMCR's specialty coffee business unit. "With its value proposition of quality, variety and convenience, this unit brings a coffeehouse experience to vending locations."

The Green Mountain Coffee vender holds more than 1,000 K-Cup portion packs. Operators can choose to offer up to 12 product selections from a growing line that presently includes more than 60 coffees, teas and hot cocoas in K-Cups from GMCR's family of brands. These not only include Green Mountain Coffee, but also Tully's Coffee, Newman's Own Organics Coffee, Caribou Coffee, Celestial Seasonings Teas and Café Escapes.

The machines offer quick, easy access to an assortment of these products for use with Keurig's proprietary brewing system. Available in a range of models to meet differing location needs, all of them are engineered to deliver water in the proper volume and at the optimum temperature and pressure to create a perfect cup of coffee, tea or hot cocoa in less than a minute.

Green Mountain reported that Scott Meskin, owner and partner of Black Tie Services (Halethorpe, MD), has tested the new machine in the Baltimore market. "It's the new buzz," he said. "I finally have a coffee vending machine that competes with any gourmet coffee shop. And it's so easy! There's no mess to clean, no cups jamming -- just happy customers."

Information on the Green Mountain K-Cup vender can be had by calling the company at (800) 432-4627.